Ridley Scott Says Noah Hawley's ALIEN Series Won't Be as Good as His Original Film
As you know, Noah Hawley is developing a new Alien series for FX. We don’t know much about the series, but it will be “set not too far into our future,” and it’s the first Alien story set on Earth. Hawley is writing, directing, and producing the series with Ridley Scott also executive producing.
Even though Scott is involved with the project, he still seems to have a spicy attitude about it. The Independent asked Scott for his opinion on the show and this was his reply, “It’ll never be as good as the first one. That’s what I’ll say.”
Well, that just goes without saying. I loved the first Alien movie and I loved Aliens as well, but for completely different reasons. Aliens will always be my favorite in the franchise. Regardless, I am curious to see what Hawley ends up delivering with this series.
Hawley previously talked about his concept for the show saying, “The alien stories are always trapped. Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”
Hawley also shared, “Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Star Trek. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst. There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.’ If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to Xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it.”
He added, “I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the Aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s Aliens!’”
While this new series may not end up being as good as Alien or Aliens, Hawley is a hell of a talented storyteller, and I’m confident that he’s going to create something that Alien fans will enjoy and appreciate.